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Sure, not access to slave like labor right? These Koreans earn as much as 1/4th as the average chinese worker, so it is ok to exploit North Koreans, but not the Chinese?

Also, the purpose of sanctions it to ensure change in other people's behavior, and what good is it if it is expressly flaunted? Wasn't there a big scandal about Iraq's oil for food scandal a few years back?

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and more about fostering better relations between the North and the South. Not an unreasonable desire considering that the two nations share an extremely militarized border. The South Koreans do have a vested interest in trying to better relations with the North.

Other than "extremely militarized border", rest of this can be replaced with China. But noooo China is the big rogue meanie who is propping up North Korea.

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There's also the fact that South Korea is big buddies with the USA, who are the main force behind the sanctions. The US isn't exactly gonna internationally criticize South Korea's policies for dealing with North Korea.

Ah, that explains everything! The truth at last!

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The Taiwan situation is different. Culturally we are closer to Japan than China, and when Chiang came he made a mess of the place. Generation of brainwashing couldn't make us hate Japan, and that's where the our loyalties lie today. Taiwan is scared of China, there is no brotherly love there.

But you love our 95 billion dollar a year trade surplus right?

I was not aware Taiwan's designation was ROJ and wrote in Japanese, and not ROC and traditional Chinese.

The Taiwan situation is different. Culturally we are closer to Japan than China, and when Chiang came he made a mess of the place. Generation of brainwashing couldn't make us hate Japan, and that's where the our loyalties lie today. Taiwan is scared of China, there is no brotherly love there.

I'm not sure you can speak for all of the Taiwanese with those statements, but mainly I was thinking from the perspective of China as well. I remember the DPP was in power just recently until January 2012, although the KMT is back in power now.

Polls do indicate the preference for Taiwanese to stay independent beyond the "One country two systems" policies of HK and Macau, but "identity" wise many Taiwanese still view themselves as both "Taiwanese" and ethnically "Chinese" .. so it's not so simple. People still have relatives in both countries as well.

Hey Archmage, no need to be snarky, he's talking from his own personal perspective -- and admittedly China is very aggressive about anything related to sovereignty and territorial issues with respect to Taiwan. External allegations of support or otherwise.

I was not aware Taiwan's designation was ROJ and wrote in Japanese, and not ROC and traditional Chinese.

That trade surplus was OURS. You took that from us when you modernised. But what's done is done.

And we don't go by ROC anymore. Just Taiwan. ROC was created by Chiang who fantasied about "striking back and re-conquering China". Him and his gang died, and his crazy fantasy died with him.

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People still have relatives in both countries as well.

People have relatives in Japan too. As I say, the old guard were crazy. We were indoctrinated as children to call ourselves Chinese, and the Taiwanese local language was forbidden in schools for decades. It was all about fostering an artificial feeling that China is mine, and that I should pick up a gun and charge across the water and retake Beijing.

That trade surplus was OURS. You took that from us when you modernised. But what's done is done.

And we don't go by ROC anymore. Just Taiwan. ROC was created by Chiang who fantasied about "striking back and re-conquering China". Him and his gang died, and his crazy fantasy died with him.

That is an interesting prospective on foreign trade. But I will pass.

And I am not sure where you got the "culturally same as the Japanese", especially since Japan has no traditional history with China other than the occupation from end of Qing Empire-1945 while China been around since the 17th century. And the aborigine people (currently 2% population if wiki is right) isn't exactly speaking Japanese either.

You are still writing Chinese, speaking Mandarin, fly the flag etc. So what make you Japanese?

Hm, this is a bit surprising, VCV -- are you ethnically indigenous Taiwanese?

There are very few people that I have met that can claim that.

AM -- let's not go back to 1945 Qing Empire .. there are still issues with minor tribes in China desiring separate non-Chinese racial identities. A country is a bit of land with lines drawn around it somewhat arbitrarily and require its own population to identify themselves as a cohesive whole identity. Plus then we get in to "Who is China?" "Who is Taiwan?" .. I'm not sure anyone would still claim Italy "was" the Roman Empire anymore ..

And I am not sure where you got the "culturally same as the Japanese", especially since Japan has no traditional history with China other than the occupation from end of Qing Empire-1945 while China been around since the 17th century. And the aborigine people (currently 2% population if wiki is right) isn't exactly speaking Japanese either.

Because Japan happened to be the first actual country to give a damn about the island. That goes a long way.

North Korea is an interesting case, and how you perceive its actions have a lot to do with the young leader Kim Jong Un. He was educated in the West and reports claim that he was basically living a life of leisure. He was called back to North Korea when his father grew ill and died. He likely doesn't have that same level of indoctrination that his father probably did. What's going through his head right now? Does he just want to return to his previous life? Does he care about what he's doing? Does he want to make North Korea a better place and free the citizens living under him? Is he taking up the hardline stance?

News sources are assuming that he's basically following his father, but he's unskilled by comparison. The example they like to cite is when North Korea made its usual threats and demands, secured aid in the usual exchange for promising to back down, and then reneged on their part of the deal before the aid was delivered. Now with no aid and less trust than before, they earned nothing more than further condemnation and sanctions. That isn't how the game used to be played under Kim Jong Il; under the rules of that game, Kim Jong Un dropped the ball.

But what if his intent is different? He's lived outside of North Korea and knows how the world perceives the nation. He knows how deprived North Koreans are compared to the rest of the world. What if he really wants to improve the lives of the North Korean people? How do you go about doing something like that in a nation under military rule? What glorified military that runs the place with little to no resistance from the population would willingly give up what they have?

If you can't change the military complex from within, it seems that your remaining choices are all external. By screwing up the delivery of international aid, North Korea is weakened internally and the population is further pushed toward a tipping point. Ratcheting up the rhetoric is partly what enabled the aid to be averted, and it's also the safest course of action for those on the inside. In a nationalistic country you are unlikely to be accused of treason for becoming more extreme; those who question you will seem less patriotic and more suspicious by comparison.

Ratcheting up the rhetoric also forces the world community to unite and take action of some sort. If we assume that Kim Jong Un really doesn't care to be in power and that he wants what is best for the North Koreans, he probably realizes that having North Korea run by anyone other than the current government would be the best course of action. Weakening North Korea from the inside, forcing the world to work together to take action... it's a near-perfect method for saving North Korea from its current ruling structure.

It all comes down to what Kim Jong Un's true intentions and plans are.

1. Where Kim Jong Un was educated.
2. Legitimacy of his rule (his father had decades of grooming, but still took four years to consolidate power)
3. Party internal affairs (aunt is ill, possible power struggle)
4. Party-Military conflicts (Military grew very strong under Kim Jong Il)

It says in your link that there were 446 SK workers scheduled to leave today, but because the NK barred further entry from the South, the replacements for these 446 workers could not enter, and thus only 46 of the 446 were able to leave. So basically NK won't allow further entrants from the south, but they need SK workers to work in the factories there, but they won't allow replacement workers from SK to enter, so the SK workers already in Kaesong can't leave.

It says in your link that there were 446 SK workers scheduled to leave today, but because the NK barred further entry from the South, the replacements for these 446 workers could not enter, and thus only 46 of the 446 were able to leave. So basically NK won't allow further entrants from the south, but they need SK workers to work in the factories there, but they won't allow replacement workers from SK to enter, so the SK workers already in Kaesong can't leave.

That is quite different than say....446 SK workers locked up and held hostages.

I just wanna say you paint Un like some sort of a dark hero, and that's...quite an amusing scenario!

I don't have any evidence to paint him one way or another, and I don't mean to push that scenario as if it's the absolute truth. It's just something I wonder about. Kim Jong Il may have traveled to other nations, but he never really lived outside of North Korea (as far as world records indicate). In many ways it's not surprising that he continued to push North Korea more or less in the same direction as it was previously. But Kim Jong Un is different. He lived and studied abroad, in a Western country (countries?).

Granted, experience living abroad doesn't necessarily mean that he'll want to change North Korea. There have been plenty of Muslim extremists who lived in the United States of America for years, only to continue claiming that they desire to impose Sharia law over the entire world. But you have to wonder... if Jong Un really did want to make a change, how could he do it?

And I am not sure where you got the "culturally same as the Japanese", especially since Japan has no traditional history with China other than the occupation from end of Qing Empire-1945 while China been around since the 17th century. And the aborigine people (currently 2% population if wiki is right) isn't exactly speaking Japanese either.

You are still writing Chinese, speaking Mandarin, fly the flag etc. So what make you Japanese?

Because Japan is seen as more modern, richer, and nicer than China, also since they are a past occupier, it's apparently okay to feel nostalgic about them, as opposed to the ruling KMT which made a mess of things when they arrived on the island with their warlord mentality. The grass is always greener on the other side.

The Japanese did do quite a bit to modernize the island, this is true, and they also tried to make the Taiwanese think they were Japanese. But the fact remains that the vast majority of Taiwanese are people who speak Sinitic (i.e. Chinese) languages and are culturally Chinese. When the KMT first arrived, they were welcomed as liberators until it was discovered that most of their men were crooks. Then everyone started going "boo hoo mainlanders are mean we don't want to be Chinese anymore", as if the KMT=China, and then you have things like the DPP pop up. If all Chinese were to go by the narrow-minded pan-Green logic, nobody would be Chinese since strictly speaking modern Mandarin is not the native language of any Chinese region, and each region has their distinct variation of Chinese culture, just like Taiwan. Should they all be independent too?

As populations get more and more mobile and technology and transferable skills make populations and workforces more mobile .. I wonder at what point to national boundaries become more porous? Maybe because I'm Canadian, but depending on opportunities available, I can work pretty much anywhere in the world. I can move my capital and do what I want. Canada just happens to be awesome. At some point you can't govern over people that don't want to be governed .. and sometimes even if people don't want you to govern them or group them up, it makes sense to "manage" due to geographic, cultural or economic to manage groups as .. well, "a group"

There's a lot more subdivisions to those tribal and ethnic identities. I recall an academic paper written .. wow, nearly a decade ago that dived into the construction of these identities and how frankly much of the categorization is arbitrary. Much of the rural countryside population do not ascribe to these officially recognized identities..

Other than "extremely militarized border", rest of this can be replaced with China. But noooo China is the big rogue meanie who is propping up North Korea.

Actually I'd argue that the extremely militarized border is something you can ignore. The Chinese don't have North Korean artillery and missiles aimed nonstop. The South Koreans have allot of motivation to try to improve relations with the North, even if it calls for things like the industrial park.

I think the international community understands that since it'd be South Korean cities getting bombed if war should happen, the South Koreans kinda get more leeway when it comes to deciding how to deal with North Korea than other nations do.

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Originally Posted by killer3000ad

It says in your link that there were 446 SK workers scheduled to leave today, but because the NK barred further entry from the South, the replacements for these 446 workers could not enter, and thus only 46 of the 446 were able to leave. So basically NK won't allow further entrants from the south, but they need SK workers to work in the factories there, but they won't allow replacement workers from SK to enter, so the SK workers already in Kaesong can't leave.

If what's stopping the South Korean workers from leaving is that they'd be leaving vacation job positions, that's probably more of a *won't* leave than *can't* leave unless the North Koreans are trying to physically bar their exit.

That is quite different than say....446 SK workers locked up and held hostages.

What the Norks have done here is effectively a hostage situation without them needing to lift a finger to throw anyone in jail. They simply said,"Nah, your replacement shift hasn't arrived, so you can't leave and need to keep working till they get here. Oh yes by the way we've barred all future access from the south, so your replacement shift isn't getting here. ROFL."

What the Norks have done here is effectively a hostage situation without them needing to lift a finger to throw anyone in jail. They simply said,"Nah, your replacement shift hasn't arrived, so you can't leave and need to keep working till they get here. Oh yes by the way we've barred all future access from the south, so your replacement shift isn't getting here. ROFL."

sounds like they either choose to stay or were told by their boss to stay.

What the Norks have done here is effectively a hostage situation without them needing to lift a finger to throw anyone in jail. They simply said,"Nah, your replacement shift hasn't arrived, so you can't leave and need to keep working till they get here. Oh yes by the way we've barred all future access from the south, so your replacement shift isn't getting here. ROFL."

DPRK doesn't control production. It's the ROK companies that do, and the workers VOLUNTEERED to stay and keep things going.

What the Norks have done here is effectively a hostage situation without them needing to lift a finger to throw anyone in jail. They simply said,"Nah, your replacement shift hasn't arrived, so you can't leave and need to keep working till they get here. Oh yes by the way we've barred all future access from the south, so your replacement shift isn't getting here. ROFL."

Do you have any source that indicates that this is what is happening, rather than the current employees (who'd I'd imagine would be mainly managers) opting to stay in order to keep things running?

This would all be a rather convoluted attempt at hostage taking honestly. And I don't think that is what's going on.